About a year after we move to our acreage, beloved Tippy was hit and killed by a car. He had a bad habit of chasing cars. We wept and mourned. I felt like a family member had been taken. The man who had hit Tippy was very sorry and brought us a Labrador puppy. The Lab turned out to be silly and untrainable so we replaced him with a female German Short Hair, Jack (short for Jacquelyn:). She was wonderful, and became a marvelous pheasant hunting dog. She also loved little Nancy. Nancy could dress her up, sit on her, put a little piece of twin under collar untied and she would just happily follow her around where ever led, with a couple of amazing exceptions.
Once, Nancy, as a toddler, had escaped the fenced yard, and had gotten to the electric pasture fence. She loved our horse and the cows and was coming for a visit. I was feeding and heard Nancy screaming “no Jack!” I looked and saw Jack staying between Nancy and the very powerful electric fence to keep her from touching it. Jack had saved her, being so young, from falling on the fence and being shocked terribly, perhaps even fatally to one so tiny.
Another time, when Nancy was a toddler, she once again escaped the yard and made her way to a large pile of river rock to be put in a 15 foot deep hole with 4 feet of water in it. As Nancy tried to climb the rocks, Jack would push her back down the pile with her nose. Of course, Nancy screamed “no Jack”, but if Jack had not been so smart and loving, Nancy would have surely climbed to the top and fallen into the water, where in such a deep hole, she would not have been heard and would certainly have drowned.
Jack was a special dog, loved by all of us. However, she could get a bit impatient with us at times. Once, after she had trailed a pheasant all over a huge wheat stubble field, she finally got the bird to stop and set and Jack held it on point. When I told Jack to “flush’, she did and I missed the shot. She turned and looked at me with clear disgust. The next bird she set and pointed, when I said “flush”, she jumped and pinned the bird to the ground, caught it and brought it to me as if to say, here dummy. We usually worked very well together, however. She was so good that I could hunt a 2 to 4 acre corn field with only Jack and me. Usually, it took three guys and 2 dogs. I would sit her at one end of the rows of corn, walk to the other end and whistle. She would work the pheasants so they would just move down the field towards me and not fly. As they ran out of the corn at my end, I would stand and flush the birds and typically shoot two, to Jack’s delight as she fetched them, sometimes with two birds in her mouth at once. Dad, Tom and I had many wonderful hunting trips with our beloved Jack. Jack lived to the age of 13 and died in the arms of Mom, Dad, Nancy and Jerry while I was on my Mission. Mom painted a wonderful picture of Jack, which I still treasure.
Jerry was a wonderful person. He was kind, loving, played endlessly with little Nancy, and was so honest that Dad named him Honest Abe. He liked to hide treasures, like a few coins, marbles, etc., but usually could not find where he hid them. One day, he came in and announced that he could pet birds. Dad said, “Show me.” He did as he slowly walked up to a robin in our back yard and spoke softly to it and it allowed him to pet it. Same thing later with a sparrow perched on a bush. How amazing was that? Tom and I soon learned that, if we ever did any mischief, to never include Jerry, or he would immediately run to Mom or Dad and confess.
At age 11, I was in 6th grade. Mr. Sasso was my home room teacher at Lincoln Elementary School. I rode the bus to school. I learned to like girls and especially Sue Holland, a very pretty little girl that I used to walk with from school to primary. Once, I even called a dare and kissed her on the cheek. The teasing and big blush was worth it. In this grade, I learned to love to read and read most of the books in our small library, migrating up to many advanced novels.
7th grade I went to Washington Jr High. I really enjoyed that grade. I was totally into Boy Scouts, sports, and I enjoyed learning. I liked social studies, history, science, English, reading and math and did well. I played baseball, football and track. Baseball wasn’t my sport because I didn’t have a very good arm, unlike Tom who could throw it very far and with amazing accuracy. He must have gotten it from Dad, who could throw further than any one I ever saw. Dad set the Kansas State record in Javelin while in Ashland High School that still stood when he returned for his 30th Class Reunion. My best athletic talent was my foot and hand speed. I was a very fast runner, winning track events in 220, 440 and medley relays. I loved football, especially the contact. I played halfback and did quite well. Because of all the work I did, I was stronger that most of the guys, even though I was usually smaller in stature. We had a wonderful coach in 8th grade, who was also my History and home room teacher. As I recall, his name was Mr. Roark. We stood and recited the Pledge of allegiance every morning in Grade School and Jr High, followed by scripture reading. One day it seemed to me that Mr. Roark was reading from the Book of Mormon. I checked his scriptures and, sure enough, he was. Thereafter, we shared a wink and a secret. The girls all had a crush on him but thought it very romantic when he married in the Temple that year to a lovely young woman. He did something of lasting benefit for the boys that played football. On game day we were required to dress up in shirts and ties to give us a special image of ourselves. He spoke to us often about right choices, and other morality topics. Though he moved on and was no longer our coach, that image continued through High School and, I believe, blessed many of those boys’ lives. When the grubby 60s dress hit, we generally stayed the course, daily, in clean, neat clothes, and game days in shirts and ties even though our new coaches did not require it.
Near the end of the 8th grade, a wonderful thing happened that truly blessed my life. The Jr High and High School coaches had all of the guys that played sports gather in the music room at the Jr High. They introduced us to Mrs. Wagner, the High School Choir instructor. The coaches lined us up along the walls and she went one by one and voice tested us. Then she named for the coaches those she had selected to be in our 9th grade choir. Wow, most of us, including me, had never had any desire to be in a choir and, until then, thought it was kind of sissy. Mrs. Wagner had some serious clout with the coaches, however, since she put on wonderful musicals each year that made lots of profits. She then shared a large part of that with the athletic program for uniforms and equipment on condition she could get their help to get the best singers of the athletes to be in her choirs. That way she got plenty of strong men’s voices and changed the image. I was one of the 10-15 chosen.
The next year Jr High, now including our 9th grade, was transferred to the old High School across from our church with grades 10, 11, 12 going to our new high school. Again, football but add choir. I loved it and we won all of the state honors for 9th grade choirs and put on the performance of Babes in Toyland. I had a solo lead and got much joy. The girls all wanted me to sing love songsJ. Again, I did well in school.
That year, a young man, Johnny Cleveland came from Pocatello (a tough railroad town in eastern Idaho) to stay with his grandparents and attend our school. He was, for some reason, 10th grade age but still in 9th grade. I was still a bit of a shorty; I was the smallest of our class that played sports. However, I tended to have an opinion about everything and was quite vocal. So, Johnny picked me out as the best one to pick a fight with for the easiest win in order to get recognition. Apparently that was the way they did things in Pocatello. Johnny stood a head taller than me and was about 25 LBs heavier.
Now, I was quite vane about my hair. We used to walk down to Lincoln Grade School for hot lunch. Johnny, with the characters he had buddied with, started trying to get me to fight Johnny. Johnny would come into lunch each day and walk by me as I was eating and mess up my hair. What he did not know is that I had been taught to box by my Dad and that Dad even had a boxing bag in the garage to help train us. We were taught to defend ourselves and others but never pick a fight or bully. None of my friends had any idea that I could fight. After about two weeks of telling Johnny to back off and being ridiculed, I went to my Dad with the problem. We discussed my repentance experience in grade school and how I had been true to that promise. Dad referred to the Book of Mormon and counseled that I was entitled to defend myself from bullying, especially after I had patiently and repeatedly asked Johnny to stop. The next day, I told Johnny that if he again messed up my hair that I would grant his wish and fight him. He did and I asked him to meet me after I finished my lunch. Johnny hurried and went back to the Jr High so he could have a bigger audience. When I approached him I asked if he was going to need the bat that was in his hand and he tossed it down and took a big first swing at me. I ducked it, got into the sideway stance I had been taught and proceeded to throw quick left jabs. He threw huge haymakers that I either ducked or fended off. I soon had his eyes swelled almost shut with only left jabs and then hit him very hard on the forehead with the only right I threw. I did not want to break his nose. He went to his knees and I told him that I did not want to hit him anymore and asked him to stop. He said “I don’t want you to hit me anymore, either.” I had taken no hits to the face and showed no sign of being in a fight.
The Principal, Mr. Link, called me into his office and asked if I had used a ring or something to hit Johnny with and I said absolutely not. He confided that that was what others had told him and that Johnny had confessed that he had picked and started the fight. Dad was President of the Jr High PTA that year and had not yet heard of the fight until a PTA meeting that night, when Mr. Link told him that he had a very quick kid and that poor Johnny had asked for it. Dad, when he got home, asked about the fight and told me that if I had to fight, per our rules of self-protection or protections of others and not in anger, then he wanted me to always tell him about it. I did, thereafter, and would have that time, but got home while Dad was gone and had to head straight for the barn to milk.